Good Chinese Wife

by Susan Blumberg-Kason

  The second fling involved a local Cantonese lifeguard at the university pool where I swam laps most mornings. A week after I’d ended things with Guo, the lifeguard, Yeung, crouched near the edge of the pool as I completed a lap, motioning with his hand for me to stop. I took in his mirrored sunglasses, silky straight hair, and skin darkened from months in the sun. When he asked me out to dinner that night, I agreed without hesitation.

  Space is tight in Hong Kong, and like many unmarried adults, Yeung still lived at home. He couldn’t bear to tell his mother that he was seeing a foreigner, so for the next couple of weeks, we could meet only when he found time to sneak away. On his day off, he would drive me around the verdant mountains of the New Territories or to the secluded park at the nearby racetrack, where we would stroll, holding hands, our fingers entwined.

  Yeung carried keys to the lifeguard hut behind the pool, so we mostly met late at night after his mother had fallen asleep. We would hole up in there until six in the morning, before the campus came to life and we could still return to our respective homes unnoticed.

  Those nights with Yeung constituted the bulk of my “Cantonese lessons,” meaning I learned almost nothing. Despite having no common mother language, we managed to communicate with bits of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. After a few weeks, I panicked: I liked him but wasn’t in love. And to be honest, I couldn’t picture taking him home to my parents. Although they were open-minded about most things, I knew they would worry about the disparity in our education.

  Since this was my first semblance of a relationship, I didn’t know how to break it off. But I couldn’t hurt him the way Jin had disgraced me in Washington. So I started to feign deadlines on papers and exams. By the time I met Cai, I had stopped seeing Yeung late at night.

  • • •

  With these experiences still fresh in my mind, I was determined not to develop a reputation for being an easy American, especially with Cai. When he looked away from me, I stole a quick glance at his face. I couldn’t tell his age, but the crow’s feet sprouting from the outer corners of his eyes indicated he was older than my twenty-four years. I marveled at his composure in this heat—not a drop of sweat or a hair out of place.

  As for me, the humidity wreaked havoc on my frizzy hair, the same hair kids in school teased me about back home in Evanston, Illinois. A tight rubber band couldn’t contain my rebellious curls now that I had grown them longer. I wiped the beads of sweat from my forehead and longed for a cool shower, even in my mildew-ridden bathroom upstairs.

  As we waited in silence, I wondered whom he would need to call at such an hour. Someone who lived overseas where the sun was still up? Maybe he was like many of the mainland students and had a spouse back home. Resolved to act natural around Cai, I focused on a stream of ants crossing the worn linoleum floor as I tried to think of something to start a conversation. Before I could, the sound of footsteps broke the lobby’s heavy stillness. The guard had arrived.

  Cai and I sprang from the bench as if on cue and followed the older man to his desk. I thanked the guard in Cantonese (one of the few words I knew in that dialect) as he handed me a replacement key. It felt cool and soothing in my hand. But Cai wasn’t so lucky. The guard didn’t sell phone cards.

  I still knew nothing about Cai but cringed at the thought of seeing him walk away without an introduction or a casual “See you soon.” Anything so I could find out more about this attractive, enigmatic man. Then I thought of something. I offered to lend him my calling card.

  He smiled gratefully but shook his head. “I can just call tomorrow. It’s okay.”

  “Really, it’s no problem.” I knew I was taking a risk, trusting a complete stranger with what was essentially a credit card. In America, I never would have lent my calling card to someone I didn’t know. But I was lonely and had an inexplicable and irrepressible desire to get to know him—to forge some sort of connection, even if it was just neighborly. Cai clearly lived in the same building, and it would be easy to locate him once I received my phone bill. That way I might be able to find out if he was married or had a girlfriend.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded and noticed Cai reaching for his wallet to pay me.

  “Don’t worry about that now,” I said. “I won’t know how much it costs until I get the bill.”

  As we waited for the elevator, he opened his wallet and handed me his business card. I was thrilled. The purple and gold embossed printing read Cai Jun, PhD candidate, Department of Music. (Men in China are often called by their family names, which is what we could call a last name. In China, family names come first.)

  “Ni cóng nali lái de?” I still knew very little about him, including where he came from, so I boldly asked him.

  “Zhōngguó, Wuhàn,” he answered.

  He was from China after all. That surprised me because Cai Jun didn’t match what I thought of as someone from Wuhan, an industrial city in the center of the country, somewhat like Chicago, near where I came from. As we continued chatting more and more enthusiastically both on the elevator and after he gave me his card, I wondered if maybe this was what the Chinese like to call yuánfèn. Fate had brought two people from the middle of their countries together in a third setting.

  Back on my floor, I called my friend Janice from the hall phone. We had become close after Jin left Washington and I realized I hadn’t made many friends apart from a few coworkers at the library. Janice and I bonded when we confided in each other one night at happy hour that we both aspired to uproot to Hong Kong. Shortly before I started graduate school, she moved into her relatives’ rent-free, sixth-story walk-up in congested Kowloon City and obtained her work visa through a job at her uncle’s textile company.

  “Susan, you’re crazy. You don’t even know this guy. He’s going to give your access number to everyone in China. You know how my parents lecture me about crossing the border only after I’ve removed all my gold jewelry. Mainlanders will steal anything.”

  I could picture her taking a drag on a cigarette and trying to keep cool next to the only fan in her sparsely furnished living room with its original heavy 1960s curtains. Shifting the phone from one ear to the other, I shrugged off Janice’s warning. Her parents had emigrated from Taiwan and were wary of everything mainland Chinese. I appreciated where they were coming from, but surely that didn’t apply to me.

  Without warning, the elevator door opened. Out stepped Cai.

  “Can you hang on a second? It’s him,” I hissed. I felt blood rush to my face as I held the receiver away from my ear.

  Cai shrugged as he handed back my card. He had removed his vest back in his room and now wore indoor plastic sandals. “I didn’t use it. My English is not very good.”

  “It’s hard to understand those phone operators anyway.” I tried to sound lighthearted. Remembering the easy, sleazy reputation of Western women, I remained on the phone with Janice so I wouldn’t appear overly eager to talk with him. Now that we had made this first connection, I felt confident that I would run into him in the dorm and around campus, and perhaps we could become friends. Cai stepped back into the elevator and waved good-bye.

  “He couldn’t understand the English instructions, so he didn’t even use the card,” I told Janice.

  “I heard. Still, I don’t think you should’ve given it to him.”

  “He seems honest.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  Chapter 2

  An Introduction to Chinese Culture

  Two weeks after I first met Cai, I noticed a typed flyer in the dorm lobby announcing a mainland student dance on the coming Saturday. All are welcome, the bottom of the paper read in English. I hadn’t seen Cai since I had locked myself out, but I’d hardly been around at night. Janice and I met almost every night, sometimes for dinner or dancing in Wan Chai, the seedy club district made famous in The World of Suzie Wong.

  Ot
her times we met for a movie close by in Sha Tin or in the thick of the glitzy Central district on Hong Kong Island. As someone who didn’t go out much in high school or even college, I knew I should have been studying. But I couldn’t stay away from the temptations of life off campus.

  At lunch in the dorm cafeteria, a few expat students mentioned the dance. Some of us had traveled to China over the years and witnessed the ballroom dance craze that had hit the mainland after the Cultural Revolution. I’d stumbled upon such a dance at the Nanjing College of Arts when my high school group stayed there for a few days in 1988. Men danced with men, women with women, and men with women. The vivacious music, none of which I recognized, and the scores of couples waltzing around the dance floor reminded me of a carousel in overdrive.

  From the time I entered that Nanjing gymnasium, I couldn’t stand still for more than a minute before someone asked me to dance. That trip showed me I could be popular in ways I never experienced at school in the United States. China seemed like a place where I could start over and shed my inhibitions with new people who would never know I had been a wallflower all my life.

  Now in Hong Kong, when this group of expats asked for the hands of everyone who would meet at the dance, I raised mine the highest. I was still thinking about Cai and hoped he would go, too.

  • • •

  On Saturday night, I entered the common room of the lower graduate dorm just as the lights were dimmed and a disco ball illuminated. A synthesized version of “Greensleeves” blared from a boom box. I scanned the room and spotted many of the expats I had talked with at lunch, along with some mainland students I’d met on campus.

  Thankfully, I didn’t see Guo, the student with whom I had the brief fling at the beginning of the year. I wouldn’t have left the dance if he had been there, but it would be less awkward if we didn’t cross paths. For the most part, mainland students like him didn’t mix much with the local Hong Kong Chinese, but I recognized a few of the latter from my dorm.

  There was no sign of Cai.

  As in Nanjing, these students were dancing elegant waltzes and fox-trots. I was about to join my friends when a mainland student approached, his hand outstretched. Glancing behind me to make sure he didn’t mean to ask someone else, I smiled and took his hand. As I tried to keep up with him on the dance floor, I was convinced that no one else would come near me after witnessing my clumsy antics. Thank God Cai wasn’t here to see this.

  But once “Greensleeves” finished, a short engineering student surprised me by offering his hand to dance, grinning with a row of babylike teeth. He led me to a song that sounded as if it belonged in a military parade. My thoughts flashed to soldiers marching among tanks on a wide boulevard in Beijing, giant red flags flapping in the breeze, and I shuddered as I again tried to keep up.

  During “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ’Round the Ole Oak Tree,” Cai entered the room with his friends from the night we met. I staggered—trying not to make it too obvious that I was keeping my eyes on him—while my dance partner steered me in an attempted waltz, trying to keep my two left feet from colliding with his graceful ones. After the song ended, I spotted Cai walking toward me and felt my face flush in humiliation. Was he going to make fun of my terrible dancing?

  Instead, he smiled and held out his arm as an offer to dance. “Are you still locking yourself out?”

  I giggled like a teenager and clasped Cai’s hand and shoulder. A full head taller than me, he held me firmly, unlike the others who had only lightly touched me with clammy hands.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a bad dancer.” I yelled into his ear to make myself heard over “Tian Mi Mi,” a song from the Mickey Rourke film Year of the Dragon. Cai chuckled, shaking his head as if to say I was crazy for thinking such a thing. We whirled around the common room, the other students a blur to me. When the song petered out, he asked if he could have the next dance. This can’t be happening.

  A Hong Kong love ballad was blaring from one corner and scratchy karaoke from another, so we danced without speaking. Whenever I caught quick glimpses of his face, I noticed that his full lips were turned up in a steady smile. His hair fell gently over his eyes, giving him a sleepy look as if he’d just woken up. And even though the room was dark, those big, beautiful eyes sparkled in the light cast from the disco ball.

  He didn’t squeeze my hand or give me any other clues to show he was interested in me romantically, yet dancing with him seemed so different than it had with the other men in the room. Suddenly I felt coordinated, even graceful. Maybe it was Cai’s height or maybe it was a sense of familiarity from meeting him the night I locked myself out, but I also felt comfortable in his arms, as if he could whisk me away from my past inhibitions and humiliations. I hadn’t felt this secure since the night Jin cooked me dinner at his apartment. But if given a chance with Cai, I vowed I would never allow myself to get hurt as I had with Jin and others.

  When the music eventually faded, he gazed at the worn carpet. “I really should go back to my friends.”

  “Yes, of course.” I wished we’d dance more, but I couldn’t fault his loyalty to his friends. It revealed more about his character: that he cared about others and didn’t put himself first. And I was thrilled just to be asked to dance twice in a row.

  I got in a few words with my friend Cee Cee before another mainland student led me back to the dance floor. Each time I waltzed with a new partner, I couldn’t help glancing in Cai’s direction. Later, during a quick breather, I saw him headed toward me, and I knew that he was going to ask me to dance again. Without a word, he tapped my shoulder and led me to the center of the room as a Chinese revolutionary song played overhead, one that denounced America from the Korean War. It turned out to be the last dance. I half expected him to stick around and chat, but Cai said a quick good night as he left with his two friends.

  The short good-bye didn’t matter. My high from our last dance remained as I returned to my dorm with Cee Cee and some other expats. As we walked back, I replayed in my mind how Cai had asked me to dance three times and how magical it felt to be near him. I couldn’t wait to see him again.

  Chapter 3

  Entering a Chinese Fairy Tale

  After my first two encounters with Cai—locking myself out and the dance—I wasn’t sure when I would run into him again in the dorm or elsewhere on campus. Our departments were on opposite ends of the mountain. And at night, I was usually off campus having dinner or clubbing with Janice. If we stayed out until 3:00 a.m., I would go home with her and sleep on her top bunk. In the morning, we would eat breakfast and watch Bloomberg TV as if we were fancy expats who lived on the Peak and diligently followed the Asian stock exchanges.

  But a week after the dance, I found myself face-to-face with Cai in the dorm lobby.

  “Susan, ni hao.” Hello.

  “Ni hao.” I hoisted my backpack over my shoulders, suddenly feeling the heat from outside pouring into the dorm. My heart raced. He had remembered my name.

  “I was wondering if you could help me with some English pronunciation. I’m going to give a talk at an ethnomusicology meeting on campus in January.” As usual, he spoke in Mandarin except for the word ethnomusicology, which he pronounced in English, stumbling over the jumble of consonants.

  “Of course, I can help you.” I had to steady my voice to keep it from going up an octave. Not even in my daydreams had I envisioned this. No, in my mind I had pictured running into Cai in one of the cafeterias or in the main library, gradually getting to know him a little better each time we crossed paths. Now with his request for English tutoring, I pictured so much more: the two of us attending musical performances off campus, followed by long discussions over cups of pu-ehr tea in a cha chaan teng, or traditional Hong Kong café.

  “Xièxiè.” Thank you. “Just so you know, my paper is about Taoist music.”

  I hadn’t a clue about Taoist music, or any Eastern religious music for tha
t matter, but it seemed peaceful and intellectual, something that perfectly suited Cai’s gentle personality. I imagined pagodas perched atop narrow buttes surrounded by melancholic gray clouds.

  “Can we meet in your room tonight?” he asked, interrupting my reverie. “About seven?”

  “My room?” Was this really happening?

  “Na Wei won’t be there, right?” Cai spoke matter-of-factly. “She’ll be with her boyfriend.”

  “How did you know?”

  Cai shrugged his shoulders, smiling with a hint of embarrassment. “Everyone knows.”

  In the midst of the excitement about our new arrangement, I didn’t stop to inquire why everyone seemed to know that my roommate was married to someone in China and dating another guy in Hong Kong or, even more significantly, what Cai thought about her situation. I barely knew him and figured it was still early to speak about such intimate matters, even though he was the one who had brought it up. On the other hand, there was no rush to ask him every little question that came to mind. Now that I knew I would meet one-on-one with Cai, there was surely time to learn more about him.

  That night I forced down a bowl of rice noodles and pasty, white, congealed fish balls at the dorm cafeteria. Alone in my room, I changed my clothes three times, more nervous than I had ever felt dressing for a first date. Nothing seemed to look right, but as the time crept closer to seven, I finally settled on a pair of wide floral pants, a silk blouse, and a long crocheted vest. Like most people in Hong Kong, I had already slipped into the plastic flip-flops that were only worn indoors.